population of a muling village not far from Bursley.  Seldom have I had such a bath in the pure fluid of human nature.  All sense of time was lost.  I lived in an eternity.  I could not suggest to my host that we should depart.  I could, however, decline more whisky.  And I could, given the chance, discourse with gay despair concerning the miserable wreck that I should be on the morrow in consequence of this high living.  I asked them how I could be expected, in such a state, to judge delicate points of expertise in earthenware.  I gave them a brief sketch of my customary evening, and left them to compare it with that evening.  The doctor perceived that I was serious.  He gazed at me with pity, as if to say:  ’Poor frail southern organism!  It ought to be in bed, with nothing inside it but tea!’ What he did actually say was:  ’You come round to my place, I’ll soon put you right!’ ’Can you stop me from having a headache tomorrow?’ I eagerly asked.  ‘I think so,’ he said with calm northern confidence.

At some later hour Mr Brindley and I ‘went round’.  Mr Colclough would not come.  He bade me good-bye, as his wife had done, with the most extraordinary kindness, the most genuine sorrow at quitting me, the most genuine pleasure in the hope of seeing me again.

‘There are three thousand books in this room!’ I said to myself, as I stood in the doctor’s electrically lit library.

‘What price this for a dog?’ Mr Brindley drew my attention to an aristocratic fox-terrier that lay on the hearth.  ’Well, Titus!  Is it sleepy?  Well, well!  How many firsts has he won, doctor?’

‘Six,’ said the doctor.  ‘I’ll just fix you up, to begin with,’ he turned to me.

After I had been duly fixed up (’This’ll help you to sleep, and THIS’ll placate your “god",’ said the doctor), I saw to my intense surprise that another ‘evening’ was to be instantly superimposed on the ‘evening’ at Mr Colclough’s.  The doctor and Mr Brindley carefully and deliberately lighted long cigars, and sank deeply into immense arm-chairs; and so I imitated them as well as I could in my feeble southern way.  We talked books.  We just simply enumerated books without end, praising or damning them, and arranged authors in neat pews, like cattle in classes at an agricultural show.  No pastime is more agreeable to people who have the book disease, and none more quickly fleets the hours, and none is more delightfully futile.

Ages elapsed, and suddenly, like a gun discharging, Mr Brindley said—­

‘We must go!’

Of all things that happened this was the most astonishing.

We did go.

‘By the way, doc.,’ said Mr Brindley, in the doctor’s wide porch, ‘I forgot to tell you that Simon Fuge is dead.’

‘Is he?’ said the doctor.

‘Yes.  You’ve got a couple of his etchings, haven’t you?’

‘No,’ said the doctor.  ’I had.  But I sold them several months ago.’

‘Oh!’ said Mr Brindley negligently; ’I didn’t know.  Well, so long!’